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North Korea Says It Now Possesses Nuclear Arsenal

WASHINGTON, April 24 — North Korean officials told American diplomats at a meeting in Beijing today that they already possessed nuclear weapons and had begun making bomb-grade plutonium, officials of the Bush administration and several informed Asian nations said.

This evening, President Bush told NBC News that North Korea was "back to the old blackmail game," and he insisted that he would not be intimidated.

"This will give us an opportunity to say to the North Koreans and the world we're not going to be threatened," Mr. Bush said. But he gave no indication of what his next step might be.

The Beijing talks ended a day early today, and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said it was unclear "when and if" the Beijing talks might resume.

It was also not clear whether the North Koreans, in their remarks during the closed negotiating sessions, were referring to two nuclear bombs that American intelligence agencies believe that they have possessed for a decade, or whether they were overstating their nuclear capabilities in a deliberate effort to deter any attack Mr. Bush might be contemplating on their nuclear facilities.

Mr. Powell, answering questions after a speech here, said that while Mr. Bush still believed that a peaceful solution to the nuclear crisis was possible, all options were on the table.

That appeared to be a reference to the possibility that the United States could take military action or might resort to what more hawkish members of the administration call Mr. Bush's "Plan B," enacting strict economic penalties intended to topple the North Korean government.

The White House said Mr. Bush would make no decisions until he fully consulted with allies, including South Korea and Japan.

The South Korean president, Roh Moo Hyun, is expected to visit Washington in mid-May. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan is also expected to come here in May for consultations on the crisis. Tonight, however, administration officials were still trying to determine what parts of North Korea's assertions were true, what parts were bluff, and what parts were negotiating positions.

The Central Intelligence Agency has long believed that North Korea probably reprocessed enough nuclear material before its 1994 "freeze" agreement with the United States to develop two nuclear weapons during the first Bush administration. But the evidence has always been murky, based partly on an assessment of North Korea's technical capabilities and what one former senior intelligence official recently called "a good deal of supposition."

"The only surprise here was that they admitted it," one senior administration official said today. "That fact itself is hardly new." North Korea has never tested a nuclear device, and it is unclear whether it could make one small enough to deliver on one of its ballistic missiles.

The reprocessing claim, which if true would enable North Korea to produce enough bomb-grade plutonium for up to half a dozen new weapons, is more vexing for the administration. If it is true, it leaves Mr. Bush only months to find a way to stop North Korea's program before it obtains a sizable enough arsenal to store some weapons and threaten to sell others.

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Intelligence officials said that they had no independent evidence that reprocessing had begun. But it could take time to detect the radioactive signatures of that process, which involves breaking down 8,000 spent fuel rods into bomb-grade plutonium.

According to one account of the exchange between North Korea and the United States, the North Korean negotiator, Li Gun, suggested to American officials that whether North Korea tested or marketed its nuclear materials would depend on American actions.

But two officials — one American, one Asian — cautioned tonight that Mr. Li's words were vague. "No one talked about testing directly, or selling," said one official. "There was language about `taking physical actions.' "

American officials had expected that this first round of talks with North Korea could go badly. For more than six months, after James A. Kelly, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, first presented North Korea with evidence that it was cheating on its 1994 nuclear freeze agreement with the United States, the two countries have been engaged in increasing threats.

The United States cut off oil shipments to North Korea this winter, and North Korea responded by throwing out international nuclear inspectors, re-starting a nuclear reactor and preparing its nuclear reprocessing center to go online again. It also moved its collection of 8,000 nuclear fuel rods, and their whereabouts are still unknown.

Mr. Bush's use of the term "blackmail" today to describe North Korea's statements was revealing. His top aides, including Mr. Powell, have tried to avoid that term.

The president's tone seemed to suggest that he would not consider offering North Korea any of the things it has demanded — resumed oil shipments, nonaggression pacts, an end to the ban on investment in the country — unless it first dismantled all of its nuclear program.

The decision Mr. Bush must make now is whether to let the negotiations proceed to another round — assuming that the North Koreans continue to want to talk. He can afford the time for negotiation, his aides say, as long as there is no evidence that North Korea is actually reprocessing, and producing plutonium that could be sold to terrorists.

"The minute we see that," one senior official said last week, "it changes the whole equation."

It is unclear whether the North Korean delegation, either in the formal session or in a less formal reception, indicated any willingness to trade away the nuclear program.

"The issue isn't whether they have nuclear weapons, it's what they are prepared to do with it," said Robert J. Einhorn, a senior nonproliferation official in the State Department during the Clinton administration, and now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies here. "The question is what kind of answer our negotiators got to the question, `Are you willing to walk this back?' "

Officials in Washington may not have a full sense of that until they debrief Mr. Kelly. But already today, the debate within the administration over what to do next was raging. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld distributed a memorandum last week calling for the United States to try to team up with China for "regime change" in North Korea.

"You can hear those guys already saying, `We told you so,' " one senior administration official said tonight.